Gloucestershire Old Spot Morris
Gloucestershire Old Spot Morris Dancers in their final years. This is not how they looked in their heyday (different kit to start with) but pretty ...
Sensational murder revisited
Peter Graham first thought of writing a book about the horrific murder of Honorah Parker by Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme way back in 1975. He was a junior lawyer in Christchurch and the murder was just 21 years old, still in the living memory of many.
Among them was Brian McClelland, a Christchurch lawyer who acted as Hulme's junior counsel during the High Court murder trial in 1954. Two decades after the trial, Graham was working as McClelland's assistant.
Naturally, Graham heard all the stories. He heard about two teenage girls in 1950s' Christchurch, their vivid fantasy world and their belief that the mother of one was the only obstacle to their brilliant ambition: to go to Hollywood and become movie stars. He heard about the plot they devised: it involved a brick in a stocking and an afternoon trip to Victoria Park in the Port Hills. He heard about the result: two murder charges, one trial and two prison sentences. Then what happened to the pair? At that point, no-one really knew.
The British are Coming! The British are Coming!
Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs were first imported to the United States during the 1900s, and they made genetic contributions to several American breeds, including the American Spot and the Chester White. The breed never became numerous in the United States, however, and was practically extinct by the 1990s when twenty Gloucestershire piglets were imported to reestablish a purebred population in America. A breed society was founded, and the number of animals in the United States is increasing. As with many other areas of the world economy, the consolidation and industrialization of agriculture has led to a move towards monocultures of livestock. This has proven to be disastrous for traditional and landrace varieties of livestock, many of which developed over many centuries and created unique qualities, disease resistance, or traits that are not easily recreated if lost.